Saturday, August 2, 2008

Beijing - Day 1

Managed to sleep all through the night... which means I'm just about on TZ. Love that.

Got up and sent out some mails 'n' stuff, showered and headed down to get a cab to the Olympic Park. Hotter than heck by 11am this morning. Worked for a few hours then headed back to the hotel. The skies have turned seriously dark here which means I'm going to wait before going out for a walk. I think we have a storm headed in.

Something amusing about large 'western' style hotels in Asia. I'm at a hotel in Beijing, the capital of China and yet, Tuesday night is 'Mexican Night'!!! (I think Thursday night was 'Austrian Night'. There is a French Bistro downstairs and a little patisserie selling coffee's and croissants. I realise that this no weirder than one of my favourite Thai restaurants being in a hotel in Copenhagen or one of my favourite Mexican restaurants being in Paris.

I checked before I came as to what kinda power sockets they have here and I found out that alongside most Chinese sockets (three pin blade type, like Australia) is a socket that takes two pin US (blades) and two pin European (pins). So I came with a Chinese adapter and power cables of both US and European style. I walked into my hotel room last night and found... British square three pin sockets. The only plugs I NEVER thought of bringing. I managed to find two pin under the desk... so it's all good.

Have to say, the people here are super friendly. Always ready with a smile. Appreciate if you speak a little Mandarin.... so far I have 'nihao ma', 'xiexie ni' and 'tianqi re' down. That's 'How are you?', 'thanks' and 'I'm hot'. I hoping that that latter translation means literally not, figuratively. Otherwise all these people are going to think I'm an extremely confident Englishman.

This is the view from my hotel this morning... I've seen way smoggier days in Los Angeles.